The proliferation of MA in Creative Writing programmes at universities raises questions of how creative practice is being institutionalised, incorporated, and made complicit within the system. Amidst calls to decolonise South Africa’s education curriculum, three writer-teachers reflect on how and why they teach, and on the possibilities of a committed and emancipatory teaching praxis. The […]

An exchange between Julie Nxadi and Asher Gamedze unravels the state of order, disorder and disarray in the realm of the militarised, polarised institutions otherwise known as South African universities, where imagination spells danger and nothing is given for now and the future. I. Me and Bhut’ Joe do not speak. He knows I like […]

From the earnest hustle of our elders in writing during the 1960s to the contemporary dreams of ubiquitous hustler writers, Billy Kahora* wonders about the place of creative writing programmes. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s memoir, Birth of a Dream Weaver, describes a unique moment at the 1962 Makerere Conference for Literature that feels straight out of […]

Student movements in many African countries have historically confronted contradictions of colonial and post-colonial rule. In Kenya, these movements sent generations of young people into the streets, underground, into exile or death. Isaac Otidi Amuke retraces heady years of involvement in student politics, and the rise and fall of arguably the most renowned activist at […]

Theory and practice have been butting heads at Makerere University’s Institute of Social Research, resulting in graduate students decrying the “authoritarian” leadership style of its director, public intellectual and crusader for the decolonisation of higher education, Mahmood Mamdani. Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire chronicles the machinations of a protracted struggle against perceived creeping neoliberalism. On 18 April […]